Denver, CO – People expect a certain amount of inherent weirdness in today’s burgeoning world of sci-fi, fantasy and horror conventions. But StarFest Denver has been “celebrating the weird” since 1977, and is, arguably, the state’s reigning champ.

Fans will gather in Denver to celebrate geek pop-culture together in the best way possible. This year, StarFest celebrates the 50th anniversary of Gene Rodenberry’s sci-fi phenomenon, Star Trek!

There will be a lot of exciting activities to see and participate in at the convention celebrating this event.STARFEST DENVER goes above and beyond the usual schedule of the world’s best cosplay, a jam-packed schedule of panels and events, and a killer vendor floor. Not only is STARFEST DENVER hosting the standard smorgasbord of guests and entertainment from sci-fi heritage, but the entire weekend is filled with the industry’s most exciting live performances. Attendees will have the chance to talk face-to-face with leading Actors, Directors, Writers,Illustrators, Scientists, Special Effects Artists and more!

StarFest is one of the nation’s longest-running fan-run science fiction media conventions, founded in May, 1977. StarFest offers a full 3-day weekend of programming, guests and attractions celebrating a host of sci-fi, fantasy and horror films and TV shows. More than 25 celebrity guests will be in attendance, signing autographs, meetings fans and speaking onstage. Owned and operated by lifelong sci-fi fans Stephen and Kath E Walker, the weekend event draws more than 10,000 fans annually.

StarFest opens Friday, March 11 at 12:00 noon and the fun runs non-stop until Sunday, March 13th at 6:00 pm. The Crowne Plaza Hotel is located at 15500 E 40th Ave, I-70 and Chambers in Aurora. General Admission tickets are $49 for Saturday or Sunday; $75 for a weekend pass. Child tickets (age 6-10) are $29. Friday Only tickets are $25 adult/$12 child. Children 5 and under are free with paid adult. Upgrades and VIP packages are also available. Purchase tickets and find more information, visit www.StarFestDenver.com

Being a person is a strange thing. There are so many different perspective and ways to think about what you are. Here is one that moves me.

You are a story that is telling itself, not a story, done and complete, sitting on a shelf, nor a story only in the mind, yet to be articulated. You are a living, breathing story, being written, here and now, in real time. You are surrounded by stories that are likewise telling themselves, so it is easy for you to get caught in the background noise of other stories and get knocked off your game. The point of living is enjoy and marvel at the process of writing and being. You are writing your story and living it at the same time.

There is one thing holding many of us back. Many of us are sleep-writing our stories. We stubble forward without really paying attention to what we are doing, we don’t consider what else we might be doing with our story, and we rarely go on to explore and live new possibilities. Beyond that, most of us have a ghostwriter who is doing a great deal of the writing for us. Who is your ghostwriter? Who is telling you what your story should be about, what it should look like, how it should go in the next chapter?

The creative potential of your life is your insatiable copyright. Don’t allow anyone to interfere with that. Take your shoes off in the presence of your creativity, because it is sacred ground. Don’t let someone else water your creativity down for you. Be courageous. Get to the heart of your creativity. It is the only thing which constantly exceeds any ego. Dig deep into it. Like Socrates, have many conversations with your daimon. Pull the best that you’ve got from your soul and get it onto the page for yourself, while your still have time. In making your story better, more connected to your own creativity, you catch others in your echoes and show them how to live more deeply from their own center.

If you are reading this then you probably tend to be careful. Careful people worry too much about rules and breaking them. Stories DO have rules but those rules are not the ones that everyone thinks they already know. Bit by bit, break them. Test the rules. A rule is most meaningful after you’ve broken it, realized it, figured out what why wrong and why it was a rule in the first place.

Not only are we made of stories, but we eat them too. We are all story-vores. People worry so much about what food they are eating. Do you ever question the stories that you are eating? Are you getting a healthy balance of stories, or are you eating junk stories all the time? Are you getting some natural, home grown stories? Are you only eating mass produced, industrial, sugar coated stories? Do you have a fat head, loaded with over processed stories? If you want a new kind of diet, change your story diet. Look before you eat. Check out something new before you shove the same kind of story that you always eat in your mouth. The newness doesn’t need to be far off from what you’ve done before, but it must be continual. By the accumulation of the smallest movements away from a direct copy of the past, a new future is created.

In the book of your life, the pages are cloth, woven from thread, spun from tiny fibers of time. While you are alive, your story is made of time. Someday, your time will run out and your story will be done. The Problem is not that your story will come to an end; the Problem is that you’ll probably never know when it is going to happen. You won’t see the last chapter approaching. Most stories are left unfinished.

More tragic than that, most stories never really have a chance to get going. How many stories begin with a beautiful introduction and careful setup that promises a gripping, moving, powerful story that ultimately never makes it onto the page? Let this turning of the year be a wakeup call. Don’t leave your story unstarted. Jump into the meat of your story now. Live a fun adventure. Make being alive worthwhile.

Boxtrolls is adorable and fun, with engaging intricacy of design and writing. It is also very, very British with huge themes about class. Will audiences in America be able relate?

Boxtrolls begins with the one of the title creatures apparently kidnapping a baby. Then we see a man in a red hat, desperate to report the incident to someone of power and authority. He pounds on the door of an impressive house, seeking to gain admission, which a butler eventually grants. When he presents his report, he is dismissed by the man in the white hat who he had come to see. Despite being waved away, the desperate man refuses to yield. We will come to learn that these two men in hats stand entangled in the underlying conflict of this movie. The man in the red hat, Mr. Snatcher, is a lowly exterminator. He covets a white hat of his very own, which signifies membership in the elite, ruling class of the town. Mr. Snatcher stands in contrast with Lord Portly-Rind, a civilized, white-clad gentleman, the absolute bluest of blue-bloods. The exterminator then forces the lord into a devil’s bargain. If Mr. Snatcher can catch all of the dreaded boxtrolls, then he will be elevated to a high station. Lord Portly-Rind agrees with enormous reluctance.

With this bargain struck, we move to the underground, where we are treated to the development of the baby into a proper feral boy. He is raised by the boxtrolls, subterranean creatures who live much like simple primates. They are unigue because they have a gift for tinkering with technology. The boy learns about technology, music and the rigid taboo about nakedness. Boxtrolls never remove their box. They acquire new parts for their tinkering by visiting and scavenging from the world above. It is on such a visit that they discover the exterminators who work for Mr. Scavenger.

The exterminators reflect upon their role and work to convince themselves that they are heroic people who will eventually triumph over the evil boxtrolls, although you have hear the note of doubt that always creeps into their thinking. While their mission is only partially successful, the boy ‘Eggs’ and his guardian ‘Fish’, each named for the picture that appears on their boxes, manage to escape. It is a narrow victory, and we see in montage that the hunt continues and each time the boxtrolls visit the surface they lose people to their exterminators. Eventually Fish is captured and that pushes Eggs over the edge.

Eggs decides to reject the boxtroll path of hiding and disguises himself as a normal human and visit the world above. He encounters a city fair where ongoing mythmaking explains why the boxtrolls are evil and to be feared. A rather dramatic, but insincere woman weaves a tale of the kidnapping of the Trabshaw baby and his father, both dispatched by the bloodthirsty boxtrolls. She is assisted by the lesser exterminators.

At the city fair, Eggs meets our last protagonist, the daughter of Lord Portly-Rind, who is about the same age as himself. She has an initial morbid fascination with the boxtrolls, but she is later able to puzzle out exactly what happened in the past and points the way for Eggs to attempt crossing the gap between his world of boxtrolls below and the world of misinformed adults above. Her grim fascinations hide a rather kind and idealistic soul. While she does not solve the hero’s plight she provides him with the support he needs at crucial junctures in the story.

The most innovative scene happens in the tense relationship between Mr. Snatcher and his assistant exterminators. Their leader insists in a pantomime reenactment of what high class people do in this world, which is eat fine cheese. Alas, Mr. Snatchers suffers from a horrific allergy to cheese, a fact he can neither acknowledge nor remember. The key symbol of status, power and privilege is his ultimate bane. This is presented with such sophistication and finesse as to change the entire gravity of the story. One begins to think that if Snatcher’s methods been less blood thirsty and heartless then his desire to elevate himself might have been a noble trait.

In the epilogue, we see a new social order that is far more agreeable than the demonization of the boxtrolls we face at the beginning of the story. As a huge fan of British satire, I hope this movie manages to sneak its way into the hearts of the right people and opens their eyes to a more nuanced vision of the world, much as Lakia’s previous outing Paranoman, did. I recommend this family movie for any fourth graders or above.

Here is the current posting of our galleries for pics from Nan Desu Kan 2014

This NDK marks ten years that we have been taking cosplay photos here in Denver. It has been a wild ride. We started the year-long celebration by diving deep into cosplay. Xander played Uncle Iroh and Jo played Zuko from Nickelodeon’s Avatar series.